France to ban wearing abaya dress in state schools

PARIS: France will ban children from wearing the abaya, the full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in state-run schools, its education minister said ahead of the back-to-school season.

France has struggled to update guidelines to deal with a growing Muslim minority. In 2004, it banned headscarves in schools and passed a ban on full face veils in public in 2010, angering some in its five million-strong Muslim community.

“I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools,” Education Minister Gabriel Attal said in an interview. “When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them.”

“Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,” Attal said arguing the abaya is “a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.” He said that he would give clear rules at the national level before schools open after the summer break.

French public schools do not permit the wearing of large crosses, Jewish kippas or Islamic headscarves. Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and faced no outright ban until now.

The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools, where women have long been banned from wearing the hijab. The right and far right had pushed for the ban, which the left argued would encroach on civil liberties.

The French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone were not “a religious sign”.

France has enforced a strict ban on religious signs, including large crosses, in state schools since 19th-century laws removed any traditional Catholic influence from public education.

Defending secularism is a rallying cry in France that resonates across the political spectrum, from left-wingers upholding the liberal values of the Enlightenment to far-right voters seeking a bulwark against the growing role of Islam in French society.